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A MONTHLY JOURNAL 



Devoted to the Interests of Honey Producers 

 f Lao a featr 



W. Z. HUTCHINSON, Editor and Publisher. 



VOL. XXIII. 



FLINT. MICHIGAN, JUNE 1, 1910. 



NO. 6 



Extracting Without Using Bee Escapes or 

 Cloth Honey-Strainers. 



E. D. TOWNSEND. 



T EST some of 

 •^ my readers 

 might conceive the 

 impression that 

 they were out- 

 classed, on account 

 of our having had 

 so much experience 

 along the line of 

 extracted honey 

 production, and 

 that the results described in this article 

 could be secured only by those with a 

 large experience, I will explain that tha 

 student, Mr. E. J. Smith, of Blanchard, 

 Michigan, had probably not taken oflF so 

 much honey before in his whole bee- 

 keeping experience, as he did in those 

 four days of extracting; and, besides 

 removing the honey from the hives 

 (9,500 pounds), he worked one-half the 

 time in the honey house. 



My second son Arthur, twenty years 

 old, who was brought up among the bees, 

 did all of the uncapping of the honey. It 

 will be seen from the above that two 

 men with some experience in the produc- 

 tion of extracted honey, and having the 



appliances that I have described to work 

 with, ought to accomplish as much, or 

 very nearly as much, as they did. 



RIDDING THE COMBS OF BEES WITHOUT RE- 

 MOVING THEM FROM THE HIVES. 



We will follow Mr. Smith out in the 

 yard and see how he managed to ac- 

 complish this result. The tools he takes 

 with him are a Daisy wheel-barrow, a 

 well-lighted, 4-inch Bingham smoker, a 

 hive-tool for prying the supers loose, a 

 Coggshall bee-brush and a robber cloth. 

 The latter article was used but little, as 

 this system of management does not 

 incite robbing. Queen excluders were 

 used on this yard, so there was no brood 

 to contend with in the upper stories to 

 be extracted. Where queen excluders 

 are used, the filled story is lifted up and 

 the empty set of combs placed next the 

 excluder; that is, whenever room is to be 

 given. 



With this system of working, the partly 

 filled story, if any, and there usually is, 

 is at the bottom, next to the excluder. 

 The colonies to be extracted had on from 

 one to two stories of surplus; the whole 



